52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Week # 35.

I would like to share the story of a special memory among my cousins.

I had made a geocities site which chronicled the immigration stories we knew of our Terry family. This site was found in an online search, by a man (Mike) who knew he had Terry names in his family, but had been separated from his paternal family as an infant. He did have a little info about his grandparents, but no knowledge of where to search. He was grasping at any straws, and sent me an email.

I was able to connect Mike with a myfamily dot com group, which a bunch of Terry cousins had formed. As we helped him search, he was welcomed as a family member although we had no known common ancestors. We found that he lived in the city where many of the cousins had grown up and we had a lot in common. Through Ancestry we were able to give him some leads as to his Terry ancestors and he took the ball from there. When we had a family reunion, he was there, introducing us to his immediate family. In fact, some of us became "blood brothers and sisters" in a little ceremony. Over a period of years of communicating, he was able to find out more about his father and was able to visit his grave. About that time, Mike shared with us that he was so happy to have been able to pass his family info on to his children and grand children, as he was undergoing cancer treatment and possibly in the last stages of the disease.

We continued our correspondence even as he was at home in hospice, sharing stories and pictures that his family would read to him. Ultimately he passed away at home, and the family contacted our group. A few of the group of extended "family" were able to attend the services, representing all those of us who were scattered all over the country.

We still think of Mike and remember that even while we were helping him with his ancestral search, he was helping us to learn to reach out and love a stranger who became a "blood brother."

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  Week #32  Theme - At the Library.

Libraries are BIG in my life.  The first experience... I wasn't even there.  We children had the measles and our mom went to the college library nearby and brought home books to read to us... Tom Sawyer, Uncle Wiggly,  Adventures of Billy Whiskers.  This was about 1947 or so.  A couple of years later we stayed in another town for the summer... a town with a real library, storytime and all (yes, the storytime where one time my little sister didn't wear her underwear).  I was almost 7 and devoured all the series books I could find.... Little House, Wizard of Oz, Raggedy Ann and Andy.  In 5th grade I got to be librarian for our grade and discovered Nancy Drew.  When we moved to a city with a Carnegie Library, we were regulars...4 kids carrying home stacks of books, then as teens, doing our research papers, etc.  As a young mother, I used the Book Mobile in the parking lot of the Safeway...quick in and out with a few paperbacks each shopping trip.  

Then I began my family searching and I can't count the genealogy  libraries we visited... city, county, state, national archives.  At least a dozen states in person, and more by correspondence.  I  viewed microfilms, microfiche, even a stereopticon.  Used card catalogs in drawers, old newspapers clamped together, shelf after shelf of DAR records, county histories. We were even admitted into a backroom in a West Virginia county courthouse where the librarians let us turn the pages of original county records from early 1800s. 

Now I benefit from online libraries for genealogy and am thankful for those who contribute their documents and trees so that all can glean more info.  County libraries are my go to for recreational reading... 63 fiction books read so far in 2022.   And all this may have led to the choice of careers for my daughter, who is an elementary librarian (now called media specialist,)  passing on the love to hundreds of children. 

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  Week #33  Theme - Service

This theme could generate all sorts of posts ... military, helpful people, civil or community service. But I immediately thought of Gerry's Gt Grandmother Lucy May Hayward, who was, according to family lore, a Harvey Girl...serving as a waitress or hostess at the famous Fred Harvey Restaurants of the west.   As I search her history, Lucy May was born in 1856 in Christian County, Illinois, daughter of Robert Hayward and America Indiana Leigh.   Lucy's father and mother had both died by the time she was 11 years old, and she was taken in to the home of her older married sister, Nancy Hayward Johnson, during the Civil War.  After the war, Lucy followed her brothers who moved to Kansas.  She was not married until 1881 in Montgomery Co, KS.  So there could have been a period of time that she may have worked for the Harvey Chain of hotels which had sprung up along the Santa Fe Railroad depots, beginning in Topeka, Kansas.  We only know that Lucy's descendants passed along the "story" that she had been a Harvey Girl.

Fred Harvey had a vision to build excellent hotels and dining halls along the route of the Santa Fe railroads.  He put out ads asking for single young women to apply as servers. The women would be housed, properly dressed (usually in black dresses with white aprons) and trained to serve efficiently, but in a pleasant manner (the train stops were not long, and on a tight schedule).  I have read a couple of books about the Harvey Girls.   "Diary of a Waitress" by Carolyn Meyer is a teen fiction novel set in the latter days (1920s) of the Harvey House restaurants in Arizona.  Another is "The Harvey Girls - Women Who Opened the West"  by Lesley Poling-Kempes,  a thorough history of this unique venture.

A fun movie "The Harvey Girls" starring Judy Garland (1946) is very loosely based on the Harvey hotels and the very respectable waitresses, as opposed to the women of the town saloon.  Several other MGM names will be found, including Angela Lansbury, as well as the great song "The Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe".   And NO, this is not a photo of Gerry's Gt Grandmother, Lucy.  But Judy Garland made a cute Harvey Girl.

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week #31 Theme - Help.   

Genealogists/ Family Researchers  are known for generosity and willingness to help others. 

Here is the long story of a helper who went the extra mile to help with our McGill Family research. We knew from Bible and baptism records that Gt Grandfather, Daniel Patrick McGill, had a sister, Bridget Jane, about 9 yrs. older than he was.  Daniel and his siblings were orphaned a few years earlier. Bridget Jane was in one census in Iowa after they came from Canada, age 14, living with brother, John. S. McGill, in 1860, Lura, Cass County, Iowa. Then she was never found in records again, although we searched all available. In Daniel's Bible she wrote, "Study well the lessons taught in this book. They will be worth more to you, my brother, than though I gave you the whole world.  From your sister, Jane.  Grove City, Iowa, Jan. 23, 1864."   Bridget Jane would have been 18 at that writing.  Very touching, but we  never heard about her after that date. 

Finally I searched "Find a Grave" for Iowa and found a grave in Wiota Cemetery, Cass Co. Iowa, for a Bridget McGill, but the  transcribed information said "wife of..." then the transcriber could not read the rest of the inscription.  The photo showed that it was all blackened with moss and age. I knew that if she had married, Bridget's surname wouldn't be McGill, so I wrote to the volunteer  in Iowa who had taken the pictures of the graves. I told her the possibility of our Bridget, but that no one could make out any words. Wiota was a cemetery that was near to where Grove City was once located.  I live in the Atlanta GA area and have never had a chance to visit Iowa. 

So my new long distance friend went to the cemetery three times, over a period of weeks, cleaning and transcribing what she could from the stone.  Sadly, it was broken, but she propped it in place for photographs.  I'm showing the pictures of her progress, before, middle, and after.  She has now posted them to  Find a Grave, and my story there memorializes "our lost girl" Bridget.  Rather than "wife of ..." we found she was daughter of  P & M McGill (Patrick and Mary).

Transcription:  Bridget J. dau of P & M McGill   Died Oct. 31, 1868  Aged 22 Y. 6 M.

Her brothers, Daniel and John would have chosen and had the stone inscribed. If not for a kind lady who volunteered to help, we would never have known about this memorial and we now have the correct information on our 2 Gt Aunt, Bridget Jane, at Find a Grave.